Speaker 1: Colz Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Robert here. The episode you're about to listen
Speaker 2: to is a keynote speech I gave at a symposium
Speaker 2: on combating Authoritarianism and Preserving Democracy for the Japanese American
Speaker 2: National Museum in Los Angeles, California. So you'll get to
Speaker 2: hear the speech that I gave them about what's necessary
Speaker 2: in order to deal with this new authoritarian way of
Speaker 2: overtaking the country. And then there's a Q and A
Speaker 2: with me afterwards where I sit down with Anne Burrows,
Speaker 2: who's the President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum.
Speaker 2: She's also an internationally recognized leader in human rights and
Speaker 2: social justice. She's a chair on the board of directors
Speaker 2: for Amnesty International. She was jailed as a political prisoner
Speaker 2: for fighting apartheid in her native South Africa. She's a
Speaker 2: pretty cool person. So that is the episode you're about
Speaker 2: to listen to.
Speaker 3: Keynote is going to ask us some difficult truths. Authoritarianism,
Speaker 3: as has so often been said, rarely announces itself all
Speaker 3: at once. It takes root quietly in policies that silence dissent,
Speaker 3: in narratives that divide, and in systems that normalize repression
Speaker 3: until it feels ordinary, and when we get to that
Speaker 3: ordinary point, it's complicity. So I know that our next
Speaker 3: keynote is going to challenge us. We can trust that
Speaker 3: he will be provocative. We can trust that he will
Speaker 3: say some very strong things and it will be fantastic. So,
Speaker 3: without blabbering anymore, I am going to welcome Robert Evans,
Speaker 3: who is a journalist and author and the host of
Speaker 3: the enormously popular and influential podcasts Behind the Bastards and
Speaker 3: It Couldn't Happen Here. He's also the author of a
Speaker 3: brief History of Vice and After the Revolution. He has
Speaker 3: that rare ability to connect history, power and lived experience,
Speaker 3: and he will certainly talk to you about his lived
Speaker 3: experience in the trenches of Portland, and he'll dir it
Speaker 3: in a way that's unsettling. As I've said, he's going
Speaker 3: to challenge us, He's going to be provocative. But that's
Speaker 3: why we've asked him to provide this keynote. So Robert,
Speaker 3: please come on up.
Speaker 4: It's your moment.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for that, and thank you all
Speaker 2: for being here. I am going to try to follow
Speaker 2: that up as best I can. Once the teleprompter's ready here.
Speaker 2: So a couple of days before I sat down to
Speaker 2: write the speech that I'm delivering now, a friend came
Speaker 2: to me and asked if I had advice on which
Speaker 2: kind of gas mask she should purchase for her four
Speaker 2: year old daughter. As was noted earlier, we live in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 2: and while my friend wasn't planning to attend any protests,
Speaker 2: certainly not with her daughter in tow, she was keeping
Speaker 2: up with developments in Minnesota, where ice officers had just
Speaker 2: shot a man they described as Venezuelan in the leg
Speaker 2: and then tear gased a neighborhood. One resident tried to
Speaker 2: get his family, which included small children and a newborn,
Speaker 2: out of the area, but they were gassed in their car,
Speaker 2: and then, for good measure, ice officers hurled flashbangs into
Speaker 2: the vehicle. His six month old infants stopped breeding, and
Speaker 2: he had to beg repeatedly before officers would let an
Speaker 2: ambulance in to resuscitate his baby. The child was fine now,
Speaker 2: so my friend was right to fear that her little
Speaker 2: girl might get gassed for nothing more than existing in
Speaker 2: the wrong neighborhood. Questions like this aren't theoretical to thousands
Speaker 2: of American parents now, and they aren't theoretical to me.
Speaker 2: I was tear gassed more than one hundred times in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and I spent a fair amount of time
Speaker 2: pulling children and other civilians out of cars that had
Speaker 2: the bad luck to exist on the same city block
Speaker 2: as a man with a badge and a grenade launcher.
Speaker 2: And so it bugs me just a little when I
Speaker 2: see Governor Walls tell protesters to stay peaceful and not
Speaker 2: take the bait. In fact, I'm left asking what do
Speaker 2: we think the bait is here? As best as I
Speaker 2: can figure it, armed and armored police officers, blind firing
Speaker 2: chemical weapons that civilians is bait, while any response from
Speaker 2: those civilians beyond packing up and going home is taking
Speaker 2: said bait. Throwing back tear gas containers or anything else
Speaker 2: is somehow an escalation. So is standing against a riot
Speaker 2: line with a gas mask and a homemade shield to
Speaker 2: stop your neighbor from getting deported. Any act of resistance,
Speaker 2: big or small, is all the justification federal agents need
Speaker 2: to deploy more of the violence they were already using.
Speaker 2: It's a neat little rhetorical game that liberals have let
Speaker 2: themselves become trapped inside. Playing that game lets them avoid
Speaker 2: answering one supremely ugly question. If your enemy controls the
Speaker 2: police and the military, and they've promised to destroy you,
Speaker 2: what does fighting back even mean. Up until the present moment,
Speaker 2: the answer given by prominent liberals has generally been you
Speaker 2: fight by voting, or by making your voice heard, or
Speaker 2: something similar. I have a good friend who tried to
Speaker 2: make her voice heard in twenty twenty. She is now
Speaker 2: in early menopause in her twenties, after being rendered sterile
Speaker 2: by chronic tear gas exposure. None of the officers who
Speaker 2: poisoned her, or thousands of other Portlanders ever saw a
Speaker 2: day behind bars. That would be wrong. They enjoy qualified immunity.
Speaker 2: They're doing an important job one every person can agree
Speaker 2: needs to be done. The year my friend was gassed repeatedly,
Speaker 2: the highest paid Portland police officer was a man who
Speaker 2: had been caught and briefly punished for maintaining a shrine
Speaker 2: to the dead men of the waffen Ss on city property.
Speaker 2: The Portland Police Union, the first police union in the country,
Speaker 2: sued for him to be reinstated and to ensure that
Speaker 2: he faced no punishment for this and was brought back
Speaker 2: with full pay and benefits. So when you hear stories
Speaker 2: of Homeland Security hiding Nazi songs and the recruiting ads
Speaker 2: for ICE, remember it's not just an ICE problem. And
Speaker 2: yet some liberals and progresses will tell me state and
Speaker 2: local police aren't the enemy. ICE is just an aberin agency,
Speaker 2: and surely there's some democratic cheat code we can use
Speaker 2: to get the good guys in blue to help us
Speaker 2: take them down. So much of the unchecked authoritarian nightmare
Speaker 2: currently rampaging through our streets is the product of a
Speaker 2: system that views policing as sacred, officers as infallible, and
Speaker 2: protest as inherently suspicious and dangerous. This is the standard line,
Speaker 2: even within the halls of power in the Democratic Party,
Speaker 2: and it is part of why regular young people in
Speaker 2: this country hate elected Democrats. The people out, thank you,
Speaker 2: The people out in Minneapolis battling riot lines and sub
Speaker 2: zero weather. No, there's no help coming. The cavalry does
Speaker 2: not exist, and so they've had to build their own
Speaker 2: architecture of resistance off and on the fly. Since immigrants
Speaker 2: and other people being targeted by ICE can't safely shop
Speaker 2: local businesses like Rectangle spelled like wreck is in a
Speaker 2: car wreck pizza, have raised tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: to buy and distribute food and other necessities. Gathering and
Speaker 2: handing out donated groceries feel safe, peaceful, and legal, but
Speaker 2: that's not how ICE treats it. Rectangle's fundraising campaign earned
Speaker 2: them a visit from armed ICE agents, who, for the
Speaker 2: account of co owner Brianna Evans no relation, stormed up
Speaker 2: on our door to try to get in. Thankfully, members
Speaker 2: of the neighborhood had been standing guard. They were able
Speaker 2: to raise a significant force of locals to swarm and
Speaker 2: chase off Ice who tried to guess the neighborhood as
Speaker 2: they were leaving, only to have their munitions kicked back
Speaker 2: at them. This is one small example of the kind
Speaker 2: of networks of aid and resistance that are evolving on
Speaker 2: the ground right now as I speak. Another example that
Speaker 2: arose in the wake of Renee Goods murder is ice Watch,
Speaker 2: an informally organized network that activates members of the community
Speaker 2: when ICE shows up in their area. The logic behind
Speaker 2: ice Watch is that these federal agents will be less
Speaker 2: likely to engage in extreme acts of violence while surrounded
Speaker 2: by crowds of citizens following them and trying to wear
Speaker 2: them down with shame. This is a good tactic, and
Speaker 2: we here might rightly consider it a non violent tactic.
Speaker 2: But the federal government does not remember Renee Good was
Speaker 2: shot and killed for participating in exactly this kind of activism.
Speaker 2: Through mouthpieces like Stephen Miller, the Trump administration has made
Speaker 2: their stance their clear. Anyone impeding the actions of law
Speaker 2: enforcement is a terrorist. Waving a sign or filming an
Speaker 2: ICE agent makes you just as much a terrorist as
Speaker 2: someone who breaks a window or throws a rock. You
Speaker 2: cannot be so well behaved and appropriate in your resistance
Speaker 2: that this government will not consider you a valid target.
Speaker 2: And yet again and again, I see no spine or
Speaker 2: backbone from the men setting themselves up as the future
Speaker 2: of resistance to Trump. Gavin Newsom can't even stick to
Speaker 2: his own guns. In his own podcast on whether or
Speaker 2: not ICE is terrorizing Americans, Senator Corey Booker's big recent
Speaker 2: suggestion was more training for ICE agents, as if the
Speaker 2: men brutalizing our neighbors aren't doing exactly what they trained
Speaker 2: to do. About a year after Joe Biden's inauguration, I
Speaker 2: found myself up in the woods of rural Washington, an
Speaker 2: hour or so outside of Seattle, doing firearm training with
Speaker 2: a group of leftists side met during the twenty twenty protest.
Speaker 2: And I know that kind of thing makes a lo
Speaker 2: lot of people here uncomfortable, and I'm afraid a number
Speaker 2: of things about our shared future might make you uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: During a break in the activity, I sat down for
Speaker 2: a smoke with a guy who'd spent the last several
Speaker 2: years teaching himself to be an armor or someone who
Speaker 2: repairs and maintains firearms. As he'd gained skill with this,
Speaker 2: he'd started to take his grade school aged daughter out shooting.
Speaker 2: He didn't like that, he felt like he had to
Speaker 2: do this, but as he informed me, I don't know
Speaker 2: that she won't have to fight for her right to
Speaker 2: be treated like a human being. Hearing that, I thought
Speaker 2: back to a woman i'd met a few years earlier
Speaker 2: in the bad lands of rural Syria. She'd been held
Speaker 2: as a slave by ISIS militants for two years, forced
Speaker 2: into the kind of life that I hope is unimaginable
Speaker 2: to anyone sitting in this room. One night, as the
Speaker 2: Kurdish dominated militias of the SDF advanced on Isa's positions,
Speaker 2: she managed to escape. After a harrowing journey on foot,
Speaker 2: she found her way to the sdf's lines, where the
Speaker 2: first person she saw was a fighter from an all
Speaker 2: female unit holding an AK forty seven. She made the
Speaker 2: decision to join up herself that very moment. She wanted
Speaker 2: training in a gun of her own, because then, she
Speaker 2: informed me, no man could ever own her again. Now,
Speaker 2: politics isn't supposed to work that way in the United States.
Speaker 2: People should not need to use weapons to defend their
Speaker 2: most basic civil rights. But can you look at the
Speaker 2: mobs of armed men breaking into homes and businesses in
Speaker 2: Minneapolis and elsewhere, many sporting Nazi tattoos to go along
Speaker 2: with their badges, and tell me definitively that we're going
Speaker 2: to get through this without a fight. At the end
Speaker 2: of the Second World War, as the dead were counted
Speaker 2: to cries of never again, an attempt was made to
Speaker 2: create a rules based international order built around the bones
Speaker 2: of the last failed attempt to do so at the
Speaker 2: end of the First World War, And as we stand
Speaker 2: here in twenty twenty six, potentially looking at a US
Speaker 2: invasion of Greenland, watching military helicopters circle American cities while
Speaker 2: secret police snatch victims from their families and haul them
Speaker 2: off to camps and deffortation facilities. We must admit that
Speaker 2: this second attempt to create a rules based international order
Speaker 2: is failing as well. We and our predecessors failed at
Speaker 2: building and maintaining a system that would stop all of
Speaker 2: this from happening again. There are many answers to the
Speaker 2: question of how this happened. The fact that the United
Speaker 2: States from the jump refused to be bound by the
Speaker 2: same rules we hoped lesser nations would follow was certainly
Speaker 2: part of the reason why our insistence that no foreign
Speaker 2: court ever judge American politicians or American soldiers was as
Speaker 2: narcissistic as it was insane. The creation of the Department
Speaker 2: of Homeland Security, the ongoing militarization of the border and
Speaker 2: border patrol, the granting of qualified immunity to police across
Speaker 2: the country, these were all further steps on our national
Speaker 2: road to perdition Citizens United. Our refusal to punish Facebook
Speaker 2: executives over the Cambridge Analytica scannal, and our failure to
Speaker 2: charge the people responsible for January sixth with treason are
Speaker 2: all further steps on that road. I could talk about
Speaker 2: what led us hear for hours, but all that matters
Speaker 2: is this, We the United States are not special. Our
Speaker 2: long democratic traditions, great wealth, and high opinion of ourselves
Speaker 2: have not protected us. The enemy is that the gates. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't mean to act as if all is lost,
Speaker 2: or as if the only path forward is bloody, internesting war,
Speaker 2: because I don't believe that the cause of rationality, of
Speaker 2: basic human decency still has a lot going for it.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of Americans hate this president, just as
Speaker 2: they despise the Republican Party and the vicious, cruel and
Speaker 2: soulless monster. The Conservative project has proved to be pole
Speaker 2: after poll shows this. We also see it in videos
Speaker 2: of grandfathers kicking tear gas cands back at ICE agents
Speaker 2: in Minneapolis. The bad guys are outnumbered. We can't forget this,
Speaker 2: and they certainly won't. But the bad guys also have
Speaker 2: guns and the legal right to use them however they want,
Speaker 2: whenever they want, on whoever they want. Just because they
Speaker 2: might lose an election doesn't mean they're handing in their
Speaker 2: badges or their weapons. So how do you plan to
Speaker 2: make them. One thing that gives me a sense of
Speaker 2: hope as I look around the country is that increasing
Speaker 2: numbers of liberals and progressives seem to be waking up
Speaker 2: to the idea that this is an existential fight. Perhaps
Speaker 2: the most hopeful thing I've seen recently is that in Minneapolis,
Speaker 2: a coalition of labor unions and community organizations have come
Speaker 2: together to call for a limited general strike that just
Speaker 2: so happens to be today, January twenty third, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: That's right, for a single day. There will be no work,
Speaker 2: no school, no shopping. Now, this is a demonstrative act
Speaker 2: when you might compare to the flexing of a muscle.
Speaker 2: No one involved thinks that one day of striking is
Speaker 2: going to be enough, But nothing less than a general
Speaker 2: strike has the potential to force concessions, even capitulation, from
Speaker 2: the regime, and you have to start somewhere. This is
Speaker 2: another example of an active, peaceful protest that will be
Speaker 2: considered anything but peaceful as soon as the regime feels threatened,
Speaker 2: and people on the ground in Minneapolis know this. Whenever
Speaker 2: I talk to activists, whether they live in Los Angeles
Speaker 2: and Portland, a land of Minneapolis, Philadelphia. I see the
Speaker 2: same thing I saw in people in twenty twenty, a
Speaker 2: grim but very accurate assessment of what this fight is
Speaker 2: going to cost them. They are going to lose eyes
Speaker 2: and maybe limbs to riot munitions. They and their friends
Speaker 2: will be arrested, beaten, possibly tortured, and imprisoned. All of
Speaker 2: these things are happening right now to regular people who
Speaker 2: have done nothing more than speak up and lend aid
Speaker 2: and comfort to their afflicted neighbors. They are willing to
Speaker 2: risk their lives because they know the hour is late.
Speaker 2: I have not seen anything that approaches this level of
Speaker 2: commitment from the liberal intelligencia, from most elects, to Democratic officials,
Speaker 2: or from the party itself. JB. Pritzker calls out accurately
Speaker 2: our present situation as being like the early years of
Speaker 2: the Third Reich, and yet, like every Democrat in power,
Speaker 2: he falls short of elucidating absolution beyond peaceful protest. And
Speaker 2: if I can get only one point across to you,
Speaker 2: let it be this. As far as the regime is concerned,
Speaker 2: there is no such thing. All dissent is violent. You
Speaker 2: attending the symposium as an act of terrorism, and they
Speaker 2: will punish you for it once they get through the
Speaker 2: people they see as more immediate threats. There's a book
Speaker 2: I come back to again and again when trying to
Speaker 2: puzzle out my own path forward in these unsettling times.
Speaker 2: It's titled They Thought They Were Free? And the author
Speaker 2: was a Jewish American progressive journalist and educator named Milton Meyer.
Speaker 2: Not long after World War Two in the early nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: he moved to a small German village to get and
Speaker 2: know and interview a number of ordinary citizens about their
Speaker 2: involvement with the Nazi Party. Meyer call these men and
Speaker 2: women the little Nazis to contrast them from the big
Speaker 2: Nazis like Himmler and Heydrich and Gerring. These were not
Speaker 2: people who had been movers and shakers and the party,
Speaker 2: nor had most of them been particularly active or early members.
Speaker 2: They were regular people who had latched onto Nazism late,
Speaker 2: but supported it enthusiastically because of the benefits it gave them.
Speaker 2: They Thought They Were Free is a chilling read for
Speaker 2: a number of reasons, but there's no competition for the
Speaker 2: most frightening passage in the whole work. For Meyer didn't
Speaker 2: only interview little Nazis. He sat down with people we
Speaker 2: might call little anti fascists. These were Germans who never
Speaker 2: bought into Nazism. They hated it from the jump. They
Speaker 2: even fought it for a time, but they were never
Speaker 2: central organizers or members of the resistance. And when it
Speaker 2: became clear that the Third Reich had taken power, they
Speaker 2: faded into the woodwork to try and stay alive. Meyer
Speaker 2: sat down with one of these people, a friend of
Speaker 2: his who worked as a chemical engineer, and asked him,
Speaker 2: one day, tell me, now, how was the world lost.
Speaker 2: Here's how his response started. The world was lost one
Speaker 2: day in nineteen thirty five here in Germany. It was
Speaker 2: I who lost it. And I will tell you how.
Speaker 2: I was employed in a defense plant, a war plant,
Speaker 2: of course, but they were always called defense plants. That
Speaker 2: was the year of the National Defense Law, the law
Speaker 2: of total conscription. Under the law, I was required to
Speaker 2: take an oath of fidelity. I said I would not.
Speaker 2: I opposed it in conscience. I was given twenty four
Speaker 2: hours to think it over. In those twenty four hours,
Speaker 2: I lost the world. Now, this man, this friend of myers,
Speaker 2: knew that refusing to give the oath wouldn't cost him
Speaker 2: his freedom. But it would cost him his job and
Speaker 2: make it impossible for him to get another. No one
Speaker 2: would hire a Bolshevik, and although he'd never been a Bolshevik,
Speaker 2: once the fascists take over, everyone who isn't a fascist
Speaker 2: becomes the worst thing they ever called their enemies. Today,
Speaker 2: I guess it would be far left extremists or antifa terrorists. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Meyer's friend explained that he thought he couldn't risk being
Speaker 2: target with that brush, not because he wanted to escape
Speaker 2: with his family and get a job elsewhere, but because
Speaker 2: he genuinely wanted to stay in Germany and fight the
Speaker 2: good fight. He had many German Jewish colleagues and other
Speaker 2: dissident friends he wanted to be able to help, and
Speaker 2: he calculated, quote, if I took the oath and held
Speaker 2: my job, I might be of help somehow as things
Speaker 2: went on. If I refused to take the oath, I
Speaker 2: would certainly be useless to my friends. Even if I
Speaker 2: remained in the country, I myself would be in their situation.
Speaker 2: And so he decided to take the pledge, making a
Speaker 2: decision I think many of us would have made. Telling
Speaker 2: himself simply that by saying the words I swear to
Speaker 2: God he was ensuring no human being or government could
Speaker 2: override his conscience, and he was as good as his word.
Speaker 2: Through the war years, Meyer's friend helped save many lives,
Speaker 2: using his apartment as a safe house for people fleeing
Speaker 2: the Third Reich. That's incredibly admirable. I think we can
Speaker 2: all agree. But Meyer's friend felt nothing but shame for
Speaker 2: his actions. He said later of the day he took
Speaker 2: the oath. That day the world was lost, and it
Speaker 2: was I who lost it. Now, Meyer was confused by this,
Speaker 2: saying what I'd imagine most of us would say in
Speaker 2: his position, Well, by taking the oath, you were able
Speaker 2: to save many lives. You were just one man, and
Speaker 2: the Third Reich was already in power. What more could
Speaker 2: you have done? Here was his friend's response. Of course,
Speaker 2: I must explain. First of all, there is the problem
Speaker 2: of the lesser evil. Taking the oath was not so
Speaker 2: evil as being unable to help my friends later on
Speaker 2: would have been. But the evil of the oath was
Speaker 2: certain and immediate, and the helping of my friends was
Speaker 2: in the future and therefore uncertain. I had to commit
Speaker 2: a positive evil there and then, in the hope of
Speaker 2: a possible good later on, the good outweighed the evil,
Speaker 2: but the good was only a hope, the evil a fact.
Speaker 2: He went on to insist that if he had refused
Speaker 2: to take the oath of fidelity, he could have saved
Speaker 2: the people later killed by the Nazi regime. And Meyer responded, logically,
Speaker 2: you don't truly believe that your lone refusal could have
Speaker 2: overthrown the Reich in nineteen thirty five, And his friend said, no,
Speaker 2: of course not, but then went on to elaborate, there
Speaker 2: I was, in nineteen thirty five a perfect example of
Speaker 2: the kind of person who, with all his advantages in
Speaker 2: birth and education and in position, rules or might easily
Speaker 2: rule in any country. If I had refused to take
Speaker 2: the oath in nineteen thirty five, it would have meant
Speaker 2: that thousands and thousands like me all over Germany were
Speaker 2: refusing to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions.
Speaker 2: Thus the regime would have been overthrown, or indeed would
Speaker 2: never have come to power in the first place. The
Speaker 2: fact that I was not prepared to resist in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty five meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: like me in Germany were also unprepared. Each one of
Speaker 2: these hundreds of thousands, was like me, a man of
Speaker 2: great influence or of great potential influence. Thus the world
Speaker 2: was lost. Now Meyer still doesn't believe his friend because
Speaker 2: he's bogged down in the historical details, the nitty gritty
Speaker 2: of the rise of fascism. His friend, who lived through that,
Speaker 2: is instead focused on the greater moral and historic truths
Speaker 2: behind it. These hundred lives I saved, he told Meyer,
Speaker 2: or a thousand or ten, as you will. What do
Speaker 2: they represent? A little something out of the whole terrible evil,
Speaker 2: When if my faith had been strong enough in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty five, I could have prevented the whole evil. Now
Speaker 2: the faith he's expressing isn't a religious belief per se,
Speaker 2: but rather faith that right and wrong exist, and that
Speaker 2: when people step into our communities hell bent on harming others,
Speaker 2: they should be stopped by any means necessary. So Meyer
Speaker 2: asks him, can you imagine anything your society might have
Speaker 2: done to sustain your faith, to ensure you and other
Speaker 2: Germans like you would have been prepared to resist. Meyer's
Speaker 2: friend realizes he's speaking about education, the very American idea
Speaker 2: that ideologies like fascism thrive in ignorance, and can be
Speaker 2: banished by the light, he insisted. Meyer was barking up
Speaker 2: the wrong tree. My education did not help me, he said,
Speaker 2: And I had a broader and better education than most
Speaker 2: men have or ever will have. All it did, in
Speaker 2: the end was enable me to rationalize my failure of
Speaker 2: faith more easily that I might have done if I
Speaker 2: had been ignorant. And so it was. I think among
Speaker 2: educated men generally in that time in Germany, their resistance
Speaker 2: was no greater than other men's. And that's my challenge
Speaker 2: today to everyone at this symposium, and in fact to myself.
Speaker 2: We all have the benefit of an education where all
Speaker 2: the kind of people who sit down in nice rooms
Speaker 2: to discuss the issues. It is incumbent on us to
Speaker 2: look out at the people struggling in Chicago and Minneapolis
Speaker 2: and Los Angeles and Portland and Philadelphia and everywhere else
Speaker 2: and ask ourselves, how can I support them, and how
Speaker 2: can I go further? The answer to that question is
Speaker 2: going to be a little different for everyone here, But
Speaker 2: none of us can afford to hold on to our
Speaker 2: old ideas of what counts as acceptable and unacceptable protest.
Speaker 2: We're all going to have to become more comfortable with
Speaker 2: taking on risk, because the boundaries between what is legal
Speaker 2: and illegal are going to change on a daily basis
Speaker 2: as we prepare for what comes next. We could all
Speaker 2: do a lot worse than to take the advice of
Speaker 2: New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Rob Hirschfeld, who, during a vigil
Speaker 2: for renee Good, told his clergy get your affairs in order,
Speaker 2: make sure you have your wills written, because it may
Speaker 2: be that now is no longer the time for statements,
Speaker 2: but for us, with our bodies, to stand between the
Speaker 2: powers of this world and the most vulnerable.
Speaker 4: Where I got.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Robert for that amazing speech, inspiring, sobering, challenging,
Speaker 3: confronting all of those things. It sort of almost feels
Speaker 3: I didn't want to describe it because in describing it,
Speaker 3: I feel that it may reduce it to anecdote. It
Speaker 3: was so powerful, But you know, I was so struck
Speaker 3: by your reference to Milton Mayer's account of the man
Speaker 3: who took the oath and who later said that day
Speaker 3: the world was lost, and it was I who lost it.
Speaker 3: And I think that when liberals today, all of us,
Speaker 3: you know, we tell ourselves that we're too using a
Speaker 3: lesser evil. We're staying quiet, or we're sort of staying
Speaker 3: within the bounds.
Speaker 4: Of you know, a particular reaction.
Speaker 3: I often ask myself the question, you know, what are
Speaker 3: we giving away in the process, you know, what compels
Speaker 3: people to cross from accommodation into moral risk? And is
Speaker 3: there a moment ahead where mass refusal could alter that
Speaker 3: trajectory or has that window already begun to close? You know,
Speaker 3: I think of my own, my own experience. You know,
Speaker 3: some people in the room know that I was a
Speaker 3: political prisoner in South Africa, and you know, I made
Speaker 3: a very conscious decision at a certain point, and it
Speaker 3: was a moral decision to get involved in the antipoteid struggle,
Speaker 3: knowing what the costs were. But I would love to
Speaker 3: hear from you about what it is you think that
Speaker 3: compels people, as I said earlier on.
Speaker 4: To cross from accommodation into moral risk.
Speaker 2: I think that's a fascinating and an incredibly important question,
Speaker 2: and it's when I don't have a person answer to
Speaker 2: because there's a degree of mystery. I've been a number
Speaker 2: of times with a crowd who you've seen it kind
Speaker 2: of come across their eyes, and like confrontations with local
Speaker 2: police or with federal ass that we have the Mountain numbered,
Speaker 2: and sometimes we have the mount numbered, and their AMMO
Speaker 2: just ran dry. And you see everybody in the crowd
Speaker 2: make a decision in that moment to kind of stay
Speaker 2: where they are, to not see what could come next, right,
Speaker 2: to not take a step forward, because they all have lives,
Speaker 2: because we have a functional enough society, because people have
Speaker 2: kids to get back to and jobs to get back to,
Speaker 2: and nobody wants to play act at an October revolution
Speaker 2: in between the middle of their work week. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that is a potential moment of change
Speaker 2: is when that the certainty of well, I have a life, right,
Speaker 2: and my friends have lives, and we all have something
Speaker 2: to get back to. When you have a large enough
Speaker 2: chunk of the populace who doesn't feel that way, who
Speaker 2: feels like, well, they've taken what I would go back to,
Speaker 2: they've taken any sense of security I have. There's no
Speaker 2: longer a point in me holding back because the state
Speaker 2: is not holding back, and I don't have anything to
Speaker 2: go back to. That's one of the things that causes
Speaker 2: mass and sudden flips. And you asked a little earlier,
Speaker 2: do I think the window is closing, and I think
Speaker 2: kind of somewhat paradoxically, the window starts closing as soon
Speaker 2: as it opens, but it can never close all the
Speaker 2: way because there's not a lot of them. This is
Speaker 2: true in every country, with every state police force compared
Speaker 2: to the size of the populace. And so there's always
Speaker 2: a potential when enough people get angry and enough people
Speaker 2: get radicalized, that a system, even with the amount of
Speaker 2: violence behind it that ours has, can be toppled. That said,
Speaker 2: the longer we let this go on, the more they
Speaker 2: have wrapped their fingers around every aspect of policing injustice
Speaker 2: in this country, the more ability they have given their
Speaker 2: officers to utilize violence, to utilize advanced weaponry, to utilize
Speaker 2: drones and things like stingrays and whatnot against protesters. And
Speaker 2: so in that way, the window within which people can
Speaker 2: react and feel like they have a decent chance of
Speaker 2: getting away or of succeeding closes because the force deployed
Speaker 2: against them gets larger, which makes it a lot scarier
Speaker 2: and makes people less likely to take those risks.
Speaker 3: So so what does fighting back actually mean?
Speaker 4: I mean that that's.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, you know, that's a really I think that
Speaker 3: That's a really important question because you know, as you
Speaker 3: spoke about in your you know, in your remarks, and
Speaker 3: we know so well that you know, when the government
Speaker 3: or whatever controls the police, they control the military, you know,
Speaker 3: and if that has identified you as being you know,
Speaker 3: quote unquot to terrorist, regardless of you know, what the
Speaker 3: circumstances might be, what does fighting back actually mean? You know,
Speaker 3: what what is that resistance encompass? And we know that
Speaker 3: it can take many many forms. So I sort of
Speaker 3: want to push you a little bit more. You know,
Speaker 3: what does fighting back actually mean? But what for you
Speaker 3: feels morally defensible and what genuinely troubles you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess to start with if the question is
Speaker 2: what does fighting back look like in terms of what
Speaker 2: is an escalation from the ways in which we're currently
Speaker 2: fighting back that is still within the bounds of what
Speaker 2: most people on our side of the aisle would call
Speaker 2: like peaceful and morally justified if it's not legal, right, Well,
Speaker 2: one thing that comes to mind is a general strike,
Speaker 2: and in fact, the only thing that comes to mind
Speaker 2: that I think actually has serious weight. The way to
Speaker 2: uproot a security state as powerful and established as ours
Speaker 2: is the way to uproot a regime that' says entrenched
Speaker 2: as ours is is a general strike, it's almost the
Speaker 2: only leverage that we have, which is why I'm happy
Speaker 2: to see them starting to explore doing it. And as
Speaker 2: a real thing in Minneapolis, you get this thing online
Speaker 2: and Twitter, on Blue Sky whatever, where people will periodically
Speaker 2: be like, we're doing a general strike next week, nobody
Speaker 2: go to workers shop, and it's like, that's not how
Speaker 2: it works. You've got to you have to have the
Speaker 2: backing of unions, you have to have you have to
Speaker 2: have a lot of infrastructure set up to try and
Speaker 2: figure out how are we going to feed people, How
Speaker 2: are we going to keep people's lights on as much
Speaker 2: as possible, How are we going to provide people with
Speaker 2: the necessities during what will probably be an extended period
Speaker 2: of time out of work and a time in which,
Speaker 2: if you're talking about a real general strike, a lot
Speaker 2: of the pillars that uphold daily life and our daily
Speaker 2: comforts will start to fail if it's an actual, functional
Speaker 2: general strike, and so you have to have systems built
Speaker 2: up for that. And it's one of the things people
Speaker 2: don't often think about when they're hearing these kind of
Speaker 2: big hitch ideas for resistance campaigns. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: examples of this just in terms of like the difference
Speaker 2: between here's the idea and here's the things we have
Speaker 2: to do to execute it. In Liberia, kind of at
Speaker 2: the end of the last really big period they had
Speaker 2: of like these kind of warring warlords, there was a
Speaker 2: massive protest campaign by women in Liberia that was I mean,
Speaker 2: it was basically pulled right out of Lisistrata. It was
Speaker 2: we are not going to have sex with our husbands, like,
Speaker 2: we're not going to do it, and it was a
Speaker 2: mass resistance campaign. This has been written about. I know
Speaker 2: it sounds like Lizistrata, but it's a real thing that happened.
Speaker 2: And when they were considering how are we going to
Speaker 2: actually do this, they had to consider some really ugly realities,
Speaker 2: including the reality of rape, and so a factor behind
Speaker 2: the scenes and figuring out how to organize this was
Speaker 2: how are we going to create networks to smuggle women
Speaker 2: out of dangerous homes and keep them safe for the
Speaker 2: length of this protest campaign? Right, and when you're talking
Speaker 2: about what's going to be necessary for a general strike,
Speaker 2: it's a ton of illegalism, right, you know, everything from
Speaker 2: people shoplifting food to stop people from starving, but to
Speaker 2: the very fact that carrying out and participating in a
Speaker 2: general strike, if one gains any momentum, will be declared
Speaker 2: illegal by the regime. They will try to crack down,
Speaker 2: They will arrest ring leaders, they will put people in
Speaker 2: black sites. These are realities that have to be accounted
Speaker 2: for in the underlying planning, and I'm hopeful about the
Speaker 2: potential for something like that in twenty twenty eight. Now
Speaker 2: when it comes the stuff that really scares me. One
Speaker 2: of the things that scares me is what happens if
Speaker 2: we cross the point into which there is no longer
Speaker 2: any hope or talk of peaceful resistance, right. And you
Speaker 2: have to consider this when you have a large number
Speaker 2: of armed men saying we just need to kill all
Speaker 2: of the people who are on the other side of
Speaker 2: this thing which we have in this country right now.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of them. They have weapons, many of
Speaker 2: them are in the police, some of them are in
Speaker 2: the military. These are realities of our present situation. And
Speaker 2: that's scary to me because when you cross that line,
Speaker 2: there's no longer any question of like right or wrong.
Speaker 2: It's just a matter of like what can survive the onslaught?
Speaker 2: And that's I think the thing to try to avoid
Speaker 2: at all costs because any sort of mass internescing conflict
Speaker 2: in the United States among the Americans, it'll kill is
Speaker 2: many people outside of the country because global food systems
Speaker 2: and global medicines supply systems will collapse. Right, So we're
Speaker 2: talking about having governors call out the National Guard against
Speaker 2: federal police forces. When I think about both the necessity
Speaker 2: of that, because you have to try to resist and
Speaker 2: you have to try to make it clear is there
Speaker 2: anyone backing up the people from this federal agency? Is
Speaker 2: there anyone at a state level? Is there any kind
Speaker 2: of resistance that the state is going to respect? You
Speaker 2: have to ask that question, but some of the answers
Speaker 2: to it can take us to really terrifying places. And
Speaker 2: I don't think we can avoid asking the question anymore.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're going to avoid a point at
Speaker 2: which some governor tries something like that, because ICE is
Speaker 2: going to continue grabbing, right, They're going to continue pushing
Speaker 2: what they can do in blue cities. They're not going
Speaker 2: to This is not the extent of the shit they're
Speaker 2: going to try. Sorry, no, you know, and.
Speaker 3: I think it's also particularly terrifying we think of what
Speaker 3: the budgets are behind, you know, that enables this, and
Speaker 3: you know, the budgets that are now.
Speaker 4: About to be voted. I mean we're not just We're
Speaker 4: talking about.
Speaker 3: Billions and billions, eh, and it's just extraordinary. So you know,
Speaker 3: I mean again going back to my experience in South
Speaker 3: Africa and you know, this idea of a general strike,
Speaker 3: you know, what was ultimately the most effective weapon against
Speaker 3: the apartheid regime was mass mobilizing, mass organizing across the country,
Speaker 3: mass marches that actually that quite literally made it was
Speaker 3: a specific campaign to make the country ungovernable, and it
Speaker 3: was on every level. It was consumer boycotts, it was
Speaker 3: mass marches, it was you know, marches specifically targeted at
Speaker 3: the aparthe eight laws that broke the back of the
Speaker 3: apartheight laws. And it was that aided by incredible pressure
Speaker 3: from outside, from outside sanctions. Of course, things are very
Speaker 3: different now. But you know, this does take me to
Speaker 3: another question something that I've thought a lot about is,
Speaker 3: you know, after this whole crisis, after this is over,
Speaker 3: you know, what are the consequences?
Speaker 4: What about accountability?
Speaker 3: You know, when we get to the other side of
Speaker 3: the s which we will, we will get to the
Speaker 3: other side of this. You know, what should that accountability
Speaker 3: look like? American truth and reconciliation campaign? You know, we
Speaker 3: had a truth and reconciliation campaign in South Africa and
Speaker 3: it was extraordinarily healing, but there was no restitution and
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, there was no justice.
Speaker 3: So what was the sort of transformational societal transformational aspect
Speaker 3: of that should we think about an American truth and
Speaker 3: reconciliation campaign? Is it something closer to Nuremberg? You know,
Speaker 3: who gain to be seen as the architects of this
Speaker 3: authoritarian movement? Who going to be seen as the architects
Speaker 3: of this anti authoritarian movement? You know, how do we
Speaker 3: as a democratic country or democratic society, how willing are
Speaker 3: we to go to pursue those consequences? I mean, we've
Speaker 3: just seen how hollow that can be. You know, after
Speaker 3: January sixth, you know how Trump has pardoned the insurrectionists.
Speaker 3: I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. And I
Speaker 3: know we've only got three minutes left before I get
Speaker 3: hold off the stage.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I guess I have two answers to that,
Speaker 2: the first would be what do I think is likely
Speaker 2: to happen? And then what should happen. In terms of
Speaker 2: what's likely to happen, I guess the likeliest thing is
Speaker 2: that if we have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it's
Speaker 2: something that we kind of have ass and it falls
Speaker 2: way too short, and there's not any kind of criminal
Speaker 2: restitution for the people who are breaking laws and hurting
Speaker 2: and killing people right now. I would say that's a
Speaker 2: likely possibility, just given the way in which this country
Speaker 2: has handled similar things in the past and the ways
Speaker 2: in which other countries have handled similar things in the past.
Speaker 2: Let's not forget the Nuremberg. For all of the things
Speaker 2: about it that were good, was also a failure in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways. Right The vast majority of the
Speaker 2: Nazis who participated directly physically in the Holocaust did not
Speaker 2: see any kind of criminal consequences. So when it comes
Speaker 2: to what I think we should have, I think we
Speaker 2: do need something along the lines of in Nuremberg. And
Speaker 2: I think that if you want to talk about the
Speaker 2: people politically who are committing crimes right now and who
Speaker 2: should be on trial, I think we can all come
Speaker 2: up with a lot of very similar names, and I'm
Speaker 2: very supportive of trying and bringing this regime to justice
Speaker 2: for its current illegal behavior and past illegal behavior. That said,
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be also a failure if
Speaker 2: we do not extend any attempt at criminal consequences, at
Speaker 2: retribution at justice. I guess would be the better term
Speaker 2: to a group of people who have underlined all of
Speaker 2: the negative societal changes that are happening right now, which
Speaker 2: is the people who run all of the major social
Speaker 2: media corporations in the world, all of whom are deeply
Speaker 2: complicit and not just our authoritarian slide, but in direct violence.
Speaker 2: Facebook knew for a fact that the military of Me
Speaker 2: ANDMAR was using their website to spread propaganda to help
Speaker 2: further in ethnic cleansing, and they made the choice basically
Speaker 2: to sit with that because it made the money, you know,
Speaker 2: And that sort of thing should be seen as just
Speaker 2: as illegal as a bunch of ice agents without a
Speaker 2: warrant busting into somebody's house with guns, you know. So
Speaker 2: that's where I stand. I'm on a we didn't go
Speaker 2: nearly far enough after the Civil War either kind of
Speaker 2: kick right now out, but we don't need to go
Speaker 2: into that.
Speaker 3: We've come to the end of our time. Unfortunately, you
Speaker 3: know I could continue. I've got you know, seven seven
Speaker 3: questions that I would have loved to have asked you,
Speaker 3: but we don't have time. But you know, Robert, I
Speaker 3: can't thank you enough for coming, for being with us,
Speaker 3: for sharing your thoughts, and you know, traveling all the
Speaker 3: way from Portland, and you know, I'm so sorry about
Speaker 3: the hundred times that you've been to your guest. You know,
Speaker 3: I've been to your guest many many times in my life,
Speaker 3: but it's definitely not one hundred.
Speaker 2: Oh there's a lot of people got to your guests
Speaker 2: more than me, and Bortland's huh well and elsewhere.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you so much, and thank you all
Speaker 3: for bearing with us.
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